The White Tiger

by Aravind Adiga

  That large piece of paper on the wall was a police poster-my police poster. It had already arrived here. I looked at it with a smile of pride.

  A smile that lasted just a second. For some bizarre reason-you'll see how sloppily things get done in India -my poster had been stapled to another poster, of two guys from Kashmir -two terrorists wanted for bombing something or the other.

  You'd almost think, looking at the posters, that I was a terrorist too. How annoying.

  I realized that I was being watched. A fellow with his hands behind his back was looking at the poster, and at me, most intently. I began to tremble. I edged away from the poster, but I was too late. The moment he saw me leaving, he ran up to me, caught my wrist, and stared at my face.

  Then he said, "What's it say? That poster you're reading?"

  "Read it for yourself."

  "Can't."

  Now I understood why he had come running. It was the desperation of an illiterate man to get the attention of the literate man. From his accent I knew he was from the Darkness too.

  "It's the wanted-men list for this week," I said. "Those two are terrorists. From Kashmir."

  "What did they do?"

  "They blew up a school. They killed eight children."

  "And this fellow? The one with the mustache?" He tapped my photo with a knuckle of his right hand.

  "He's the guy who caught them."

  "How did he do that?"

  To create the illusion I was reading the printing on the wall, I squinted at the two posters, and moved my lips.

  "This fellow was a driver. Says here he was in his car, and these two terrorist guys came up to him."

  "Then?"

  "Says he pretended he didn't know they were terrorists, and took them for a ride around Delhi in his car. Then he stopped the car in a dark spot, and smashed a bottle and cut their necks with it." I slashed two necks with my thumb.

  "What kind of bottle?"

  "An English liquor bottle. They tend to be pretty solid."

  "I know," he said. "I used to go to the English liquor shop for my master every Friday. He liked Smir-fone."

  "Smir-noff," I said, but he wasn't listening. He was peering again at the photo in the poster.

  Suddenly he put his hand on my shoulder.

  "You know who this fellow in the poster looks like?"

  "Who?" I asked.

  He grinned.

  "Me."

  I looked at his face, and I looked at the photo.

  "It's true," I said, slapping him on the back.

  I told you: it could be the face of half the men in India.

  And then, because I felt sorry for that poor illiterate, thinking he had just endured what my father must have endured at so many railway stations-being mocked and hoodwinked by strangers-I bought him a cup of tea before going back to the train.

  * * *

  Sir:

  I am not a politician or a parliamentarian. Not one of those extraordinary men who can kill and move on, as if nothing had happened. It took me four weeks in Bangalore to calm my nerves.

  For those four weeks I did the same thing again and again. I left the hotel-a small, seedy place near the train station that I had taken after leaving a deposit of five hundred rupees-every morning at eight and walked around with a bag full of cash in my hands for four hours (I dared not leave it in the hotel room) before returning for lunch.

  Dharam and I ate together. What he did to keep himself amused in the mornings I don't know, but he was in good spirits. This was the first holiday he had had in his whole life. His smiles cheered me up.

  Lunch was four rupees a plate. The food is good value in the south. It is strange food, though, vegetables cut up and served in watery curries. Then I went up to my room and slept. At four o'clock I came down and ordered a pack of Parle Milk biscuits and a tea, because I did not know yet how to drink the coffee.

  I was eager to try coffee. You see, poor people in the north of this country drink tea, and poor people in the south drink coffee. Who decided that things should be like this, I don't know, but it's like this. So this was the first time I was smelling coffee on a daily basis. I was dying to try it out. But before you could drink it, you had to know how to drink it. There was an etiquette, a routine, associated with it that fascinated me. It was served in a cup set into a tumbler, and then it had to be poured in certain quantities and sipped at a certain speed from the tumbler. How the pouring was to be done, how the sipping was to be done, I did not know. For a while I only watched.

  It took me a week to realize that everyone was doing it differently. One man poured all the coffee into his tumbler at once; another never used the tumbler at all.

  They're all strangers here, I said to myself. They're all drinking coffee for the first time.

  That was another of the attractions of Bangalore. The city was full of outsiders. No one would notice one more.

  I spent four weeks in that hotel near the railway station, doing nothing. I admit there were doubts in my mind. Should I have gone to Mumbai instead? But the police would have thought of that at once-everyone goes to Mumbai in the films after they kill someone, don't they?

  Calcutta! I should have gone there.

  One morning Dharam said: "Uncle, you look so depressed. Let's go for a walk." We walked through a park where drunken men lay on benches amid wild overgrown weeds. We came out onto a broad road; on the other side of the road stood a huge stone building with a golden lion on top of it.

  "What is this building, Uncle?"

  "I don't know, Dharam. It must be where the ministers live in Bangalore."

  On the gable of the building I saw a slogan:

  GOVERNMENT WORK IS GOD'S WORK

  "You're smiling, Uncle."

  "You're right, Dharam. I am smiling. I think we'll have a good time in Bangalore," I said and I winked at him.

  I moved out of the hotel and took a flat on rent. Now I had to make a living in Bangalore -I had to find out how I could fit into this city.

  I tried to hear Bangalore 's voice, just as I had heard Delhi 's.

  I went down M.G. Road and sat down at the Cafй Coffee Day, the one with the outdoor tables. I had a pen and a piece of paper with me, and I wrote down everything I overheard.

  I completed that computer program in two and a half minutes.

  An American today offered me four-hundred thousand dollars for my start-up and I told him, "That's not enough!"

  Is Hewlett-Packard a better company than IBM?

  Everything in the city, it seemed, came down to one thing.

  Outsourcing. Which meant doing things in India for Americans over the phone. Everything flowed from it-real estate, wealth, power, sex. So I would have to join this outsourcing thing, one way or the other.

  The next day I took an autorickshaw up to Electronics City. I found a banyan tree by the side of a road, and I sat down under it. I sat and watched the buildings until it was evening and I saw all the SUVs racing in; and then I watched until two in the morning, when the SUVs began racing out of the buildings.

  And I thought, That's it. That's how I fit in.

  Let me explain, Your Excellency. See, men and women in Bangalore live like the animals in a forest do. Sleep in the day and then work all night, until two, three, four, five o'clock, depending, because their masters are on the other side of the world, in America. Big question: how will the boys and girls-girls especially-get from home to the workplace in the late evening and then get back home at three in the morning? There is no night bus system in Bangalore, no train system like in Mumbai. The girls would not be safe on buses or trains anyway. The men of this city, frankly speaking, are animals.

  That's where entrepreneurs come in.

  The next thing I did was to go to a Toyota Qualis dealer in the city and say, in my sweetest voice, "I want to drive your cars." The dealer looked at me, puzzled.

  I couldn't believe I had said that. Once a servant, always a servant: the instinct is always there, insid
e you, somewhere near the base of your spine. If you ever came to my office, Mr. Premier, I would probably try to press your feet at once.

  I pinched my left palm. I smiled as I held it pinched and said-in a deep, gruff voice, "I want to rent your cars."

  * * *

  The last stage in my amazing success story, sir, was to go from being a social entrepreneur to a business entrepreneur. This part wasn't easy at all.

  I called them all up, one after the other, the officers of all the outsourcing companies in Bangalore. Did they need a taxi service to pick up their employees in the evening? Did they need a taxi service to drop off their employees late at night?

  And you know what they all said, of course.

  One woman was kind enough to explain:

  "You're too late. Every business in Bangalore already has a taxi service to pick up and drop off their employees at night. I'm sorry to tell you this."

  It was just like starting out in Dhanbad-I got depressed. I lay in bed a whole day.

  What would Mr. Ashok do? I wondered.

  Then it hit me. I wasn't alone-I had someone on my side! I had thousands on my side!

  You'll see my friends when you visit Bangalore -fat, paunchy men swinging their canes, on Brigade Road, poking and harassing vendors and shaking them down for money.

  I'm talking of the police, of course.

  The next day I paid a local to be a translator-you know, I'm sure, that the people of the north and the south in my country speak different languages-and went to the nearest police station. In my hand I had the red bag. I acted like an important man, and made sure the policemen saw the red bag by swinging it a lot, and gave them a business card I had just had printed. Then I insisted on seeing the big man there, the inspector. At last they let me into his office-the red bag had done the trick.

  The big man sat at a huge desk, with shiny badges on his khaki uniform and the red marks of religion on his forehead. Behind him were three portraits of gods. But not the one I was looking for.

  Oh, thank God. There was one of Gandhi too. It was in the corner.

  With a big smile-and a namaste-I handed him the red bag. He opened it cautiously.

  I said, via the translator, "Sir, I want to make a small offering of my gratitude to you."

  It's amazing. The moment you show cash, everyone knows your language.

  "Gratitude for what?" the inspector asked in Hindi, peering into the bag with one eye closed.

  "For all the good you are going to do me, sir."

  He counted the money-ten thousand rupees-heard what I wanted, and asked for double. I gave him a bit more, and he was happy. I tell you, Mr. Premier, my poster was right there, the one that I had seen earlier, the whole time I was negotiating with him. The WANTED poster, with the dirty little photo of me.

  Two days later, I called up the nice woman at the Internet company who had turned me down, and heard a shocking tale. Her taxi service had been disrupted. A police raid had discovered that most of the drivers did not have licenses.

  "I'm so sorry, madam," I said. "I offer you my sympathies. In addition, I offer you my company. White Tiger Drivers."

  "Do all your drivers have licenses?"

  "Of course, madam. You can call the police and check."

  She did just that, and called me back. I think the police must have put in a good word for me. And that was how I got my own-as they say in English-"start-up."

  I was one of the drivers in the early days, but then I gave up. I don't really think I ever enjoyed driving, you know? Talking is much more fun. Now the start-up has grown into a big business. We've got sixteen drivers who work in shifts with twenty-six vehicles. Yes, it's true: a few hundred thousand rupees of someone else's money, and a lot of hard work, can make magic happen in this country. Put together my real estate and my bank holdings, and I am worth fifteen times the sum I borrowed from Mr. Ashok. See for yourself at my Web site. See my motto: "We Drive Technology Forward." In English! See the photos of my fleet: twenty-six shining new Toyota Qualises, all fully air-conditioned for the summer months, all contracted out to famous technology companies. If you like my SUVs, if you want your call-center boys and girls driven home in style, just click where it says CONTACT ASHOK SHARMA NOW.

  Yes, Ashok! That's what I call myself these days. Ashok Sharma, North Indian entrepreneur, settled in Bangalore.

  If you were sitting here with me, under this big chandelier, I would show you all the secrets of my business. You could stare at the screen of my silver Macintosh laptop and see photos of my SUVs, my drivers, my garages, my mechanics, and my paid-off policemen.

  All of them belong to me-Munna, whose destiny was to be a sweet-maker!

  You'll see photos of my boys too. All sixteen of them. Once I was a driver to a master, but now I am a master of drivers. I don't treat them like servants-I don't slap, or bully, or mock anyone. I don't insult any of them by calling them my "family," either. They're my employees, I'm their boss, that's all. I make them sign a contract and I sign it too, and both of us must honor that contract. That's all. If they notice the way I talk, the way I dress, the way I keep things clean, they'll go up in life. If they don't, they'll be drivers all their lives. I leave the choice up to them. When the work is done I kick them out of the office: no chitchat, no cups of coffee. A White Tiger keeps no friends. It's too dangerous.

  Now, despite my amazing success story, I don't want to lose contact with the places where I got my real education in life.

  The road and the pavement.

  I walk about Bangalore in the evenings, or in the early mornings, just to listen to the road.

  One evening when I was near the train station, I saw a dozen or so manual laborers gathered together in front of a wall and talking in low tones. They were speaking in a strange language; they were the locals of the place. I didn't have to understand their words to know what they were saying. In a city where so many had streamed in from outside, they were the ones left behind.

  They were reading something on that wall. I wanted to see what it was, but they stopped their talking and crowded in front of the wall. I had to threaten to call the police before they parted and let me see what they had been reading.

  It was a stenciled image of a pair of hands smashing its manacles:

  THE GREAT SOCIALIST IS COMING TO BANGALORE

  In a couple of weeks he arrived. He had a big rally here and gave a terrific speech, all about fire and blood and purging this country of the rich because there was going to be no fresh water for the poor in ten years because the world was getting hotter. I stood at the back and listened. At the end people clapped like crazy. There is a lot of anger in this town, that's for sure.

  Keep your ears open in Bangalore -in any city or town in India -and you will hear stirrings, rumors, threats of insurrection. Men sit under lampposts at night and read. Men huddle together and discuss and point fingers to the heavens. One night, will they all join together-will they destroy the Rooster Coop?

  Ha!

  Maybe once in a hundred years there is a revolution that frees the poor. I read this in one of those old textbook pages people in tea stalls use to wrap greasy samosas with. See, only four men in history have led successful revolutions to free the slaves and kill their masters, this page said:

  Alexander the Great.

  Abraham Lincoln of America.

  Mao of your country.

  And a fourth man. It may have been Hitler, I can't remember.

  But I don't think a fifth name is getting added to the list anytime soon.

  An Indian revolution?

  No, sir. It won't happen. People in this country are still waiting for the war of their freedom to come from somewhere else-from the jungles, from the mountains, from China, from Pakistan. That will never happen. Every man must make his own Benaras.

  The book of your revolution sits in the pit of your belly, young Indian. Crap it out, and read.

  Instead of which, they're all sitting in front of color TVs a
nd watching cricket and shampoo advertisements.

  On the topic of shampoo advertisements, Mr. Premier, I must say that golden-colored hair sickens me now. I don't think it's healthy for a woman to have that color of hair. I don't trust the TV or the big outdoor posters of white women that you see all over Bangalore. I go from my own experience now, from the time I spend in five-star hotels. (That's right, Mr. Jiabao: I don't go to "red light districts" anymore. It's not right to buy and sell women who live in birdcages and get treated like animals. I only buy girls I find in five-star hotels.)

  Based on my experience, Indian girls are the best.

  (Well, second-best. I tell you, Mr. Jiabao, it's one of the most thrilling sights you can have as a man in Bangalore, to see the eyes of a pair of Nepali girls flashing out at you from the dark hood of an autorickshaw.)

  In fact, the sight of these golden-haired foreigners-and you'll discover that Bangalore is full of them these days-has only convinced me that the white people are on the way out. All of them look so emaciated-so puny. You'll never see one of them with a decent belly. For this I blame the president of America; he has made buggery perfectly legal in his country, and men are marrying other men instead of women. This was on the radio. This is leading to the decline of the white man. Then white people use cell phones too much, and that is destroying their brains. It's a known fact. Cell phones cause cancer in the brain and shrink your masculinity; the Japanese invented them to diminish the white man's brain and balls at the same time. I overheard this at the bus stand one night. Until then I had been very proud of my Nokia, showing it to all the call-center girls I was hoping to dip my beak into, but I threw it away at once. Every call that you make to me, you have to make it on a landline. It hurts my business, but my brain is too important, sir: it's all that a thinking man has in this world.

  White men will be finished within my lifetime. There are blacks and reds too, but I have no idea what they're up to-the radio never talks about them. My humble prediction: in twenty years' time, it will be just us yellow men and brown men at the top of the pyramid, and we'll rule the whole world.